A New Yorker Seeks a Consensus on a National Black Museum

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Dozens of letters have arrived at the Smithsonian Institution in the last few months for Claudine Brown.

The letters end up in a tiny office in the Arts and Industries Building, where Ms. Brown has embarked on a new Smithsonian quest. She is exploring, in the words of the head of the Smithsonian, Robert McC. Adams, ''the form and content of an African-American presence on the Mall.''

''The letters and phone calls started while I was still in Brooklyn, the day the announcement was made,'' said Ms. Brown, who resigned as assistant director for government and community relations at the Brooklyn Museum in January to take on this job. ''I've heard from students, from educators and from citizens who have strong, passionate feelings and want to get involved in some way,'' she continued.

The 40-year-old Ms. Brown, a graduate of Pratt Institute, has a Master of Science degree in museum education from the Bank Street College of Education in New York and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School. She joined the Brooklyn Museum in 1977 as a school programs instructor. Ms. Brown is well known among museum people for her work on programming for special audiences.

Legislation calling for a National Museum of African-American Heritage has been introduced in both houses of Congress, and the proposal has been debated and discussed in newspaper columns and letters to the editor as well as among members of Congress.

Should there be such an institution on the Mall? Should it be an adjunct to one of the museums in the Smithsonian complex or should it have its own building? Should it be a repository? A research center?

In Congressional hearings last fall, Mr. Adams suggested that the museum be a wing of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, ''joining its presence,'' he said, ''with the broad themes of American history and culture as a whole.''

For five years, black Americans have been lobbying for such a museum, which was first proposed by Tom Mack, a Washington businessman. A bill introduced by Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, would authorize $5 million in support of a fund-raising drive to raise $200 million for its construction. The measure, which has 67 co-signers, would also establish a National Trust for Black Museums to collect articles representing black history.

For a Separate Building

Some editorial writers and other critics of the idea say such an institution would ghettoize the black experience, but Representative Lewis strongly disagrees. ''I think the whole story of African-Americans in America needs to be told in a world-class setting, not relegated to a subdivision of the American History Museum,'' he said in an interview. ''There would be a spirit about the place; the building itself would take on a character of its own.''

''This is a museum for all Americans, not just black Americans,'' he said. ''We want it to tell the whole story of the passage from the west coast of Africa, the system of slavery, the anti-slavery movement, to depict in Washington on the Mall the whole struggle - the sharecropper system, discrimination, segregation - bringing the story up to contemporary America. It would demonstrate the distance we have come as a democracy and the distance we still must travel.''

Similar legislation has been introduced by Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, who says he feels a national institution will be a boon to smaller black American museums around the country, encouraging the exchange of holdings and exhibitions.

''Certainly our experiences here are very different from other Americans,'' Ms. Brown said. ''Many people are appalled at the lack of progress that Native Americans and African-Americans have had in terms of overcoming poverty. We are a group of people who have had laws made and enforced which have perpetuated our poverty, and we've spent lifetimes trying to change those laws. I think it important that tourists who come from around the country and from abroad to this capital know about the unique experience that both these peoples have had.''

The Smithsonian has been criticized by Congressional oversight committees and by its own cultural equity committee for its lack of minority members in senior professional positions. Last October a group of scholars and administrators was convened by the Smithsonian to discuss how the institution could strengthen its presentation of black American art, history and culture.

Effect on Other Museums

''All kinds of factors were predisposing us in this direction,'' Mr. Adams said of the proposed museum. ''It takes time for these things to move in Congress, but it is in the process of gathering strength and within a few years my guess is that the support will be there for a new institution. So you try to get on top of it and draw the threads together to see how they relate to the Smithsonian and the Smithsonian relates to them. There is a lot of diffuseness on the question. It is a complicated business to get a museum going, especially if you don't start off with an identifiable collection.''

Mr. Adams also mentioned the African American Museum Association and its 100 or more members. ''Some of those museums may not be anxious to have a giant vacuum cleaner appear on the Mall and suck them dry of financial support and material,'' he said. ''Those are all issues that have to be dealt with.''

Ms. Brown has been making the rounds, talking to people inside the Smithsonian and out. She has also formed a 22-member advisory committee headed by Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, Commissioner for Cultural Affairs in New York, to review and analyze issues relating to the museum proposal. The committee's first meeting is scheduled this month, and it is to report its findings by the end of the year.

The Sources of Displays

''The first question, of course, is what kind of an entity should we be looking at,'' Ms. Brown said. ''There have been any number of suggestions, and we will be hearing from different kinds of cultural institutions. We will look at where there are gaps in scholarship, how we can best work collectively with other African-American museums.''

One concern, she said, is that there is no collection of black American artifacts on the scale of the Heye collection, which will be the centerpiece of the National Museum of the American Indian.

But both Representative Lewis and Ms. Brown expressed confidence that the museum, if it comes into being, will have little difficulty filling its display cases with material from the masses of artifacts, documents, letters, photographs and other historical treasures stored in homes, churches and schools around the country.

A version of this article appears in print on June 9, 1990, on Page 1001012 of the National edition with the headline: A New Yorker Seeks a Consensus on a National Black Museum. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe